The "Wizard World Gaming Portland Panel" (Sx07), entitled "'How Do You Want To Do This?' with the Cast of Geek & Sundry's Critical Role", was a convention panel[1] streamed live on Twitch[2].
Synopsis[]
- What are your plans if someone dies or everybody die in a Team Party Kill?
- Matt: If any characters were to die, they would roll up a new character and they'd incorporate them into the story to then join Vox Machina. If it's a TPK and if Matt survive the internet's backlash, they would pick were the story left off with another band of adventurers to continue the plot from a different angle.
- What were your inspirations for your characters?
- Travis: He chose to be a goliath barbarian because he wanted to be a big character that liked to drink, fight a lot, and makes fine leather boots.
- Taliesin: Initially played a dragonborn paladin. His second character, Percival de Rolo, was based on the short story that Taliesin had written with inspiration from the movie Plunkett & Macleane.
- Sam: Scanlan Shorthalt was suggested by Liam O'Brien with name randomized in D&D name generator to be the dumbest character because it was just supposed to be for that one game at Liam's birthday they played together.
- Marisha: She didn't like the druid class in D&D 4th edition, but she gave it a try in Pathfinder were she could choose a domain but couldn't decide between any of the elements. So she started with air and decided to get all of them. Keyleth's air direction was inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender even though she didn't mean to in the first place.
- Laura She intially wanted to be a half-elf rogue but Liam was the first to claim this class and race. As they both have the same birthday, they compromised to be half-elven twins but with Laura playing a ranger. She also wanted a class who can have an animal companion.
- Matt: What comes first: the voice or the NPC?
- It's the NPC. The inspiration comes from where they fit in the story, where they fit in the civilization, and what their drives are. Then Matt starts to think about their history. Then he decides, depending from that point, what their racial traits and lifestyle would lend them to have a specific type of voice. So the voice is the last thing that comes into play.
- Taliesin: What are Percy's spells?
- Part of the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat. It's Hex, Minor Illusion, and Friends.
- Do you think Vaxleth (Vax'ildan and Keyleth) is a healthy relationship?
- Everyone in the cast agree to say no, not at all. Marisha doesn't necessarily agrees.
- How do you encourage players to role play in the game?
- Matt: A person has to be comfortable enough to step out of their comfort zone to try it, so you can't force it on them. For Matt, it helps if you engage them as the NPC directly, coax them out by having a discussion. This might take a while to get used to.
- Matt: How do you portray women well in games?
- By approaching the character the same way as if it was any other person. Thinking of their wants, their needs, their fears, their drives, their goals. You consider their place in the world as a female, like their power dynamic in society. Be comfortable that's a strong character, not necessarily that it's a woman. That becomes a secondary and unnecessary facet to it.
- Marisha: That's true for storytelling in general.
- Matt: As for the voice, the process doesn't change. The difference is between chest voice and head voice. Taking a more softer and lighter tone that can be gently domineering, which Matt really enjoys as a strong female NPC such as Allura Vysoren for example.
- Do you watch or play [in] other D&D shows?
- Sam: He can barely make the games they're playing, so he doesn't have a lot of time to veg out and watch other doing the same. Although Sam enjoyed watching Titansgrave.
- Laura: She loves D20 Babe and her and Travis did a Star Wars RPG with Kurtis Wiebe.
- Marisha: Acquisitions Incorporated is always great and has been around forever.
- Matt: He has enjoyed Real Role Play with itmeJP. And more recently High Rollers DMed by Mark Hulmes.
- Has Marisha ever translated the in-character letter from Pike Trickfoot written in Celestial?
- That is still on her to-do list. However, the person in the audience who asked the question translated the letter so she didn't have to and gave it to her.
- Why doesn't Critical Role have critical fails?
- Matt considers natural ones more of a narrative failure in his games. He likes to explain the visual aspect of why you failed so much. Sometimes it's more of a mechanical horrible blunder.
- What role would you steal from your colleagues?
- Laura & Marisha: they would take Ellie from The Last of Us but both know that Ellie wouldn't be that awesome character if Ashley Johnson hadn't played her. The actors bring so much to the characters themselves that it wouldn't be the same.
- Marisha: would also take Thor from Travis though.
- Taliesin: would take Black Widow from Laura.
- How do you cleanse the Wil Wheaton curse?
- It's a really strong curse.
- Taliesin: had sage powdered in dragon's blood for that.
- Matt stepped forward to touch the hand of the audience member who had been "cursed" by Wil Wheaton to help them cure.
- Matt: How do you come up with all the names for the places around the world?
- It starts with letters that haven't been used very often in other areas, so I'll be like, all right, I made a Stilben, so that's an S name so I don't want to make another S named town nearby, so I'll go W for Westruun. And then from that point, I started taking inspiration from different languages that would affiliate that area. A lot of Norse language works near Vasselheim. Looking into root words and certain spelling techniques in other languages and jamming things together that sound interesting and roll off the tongue well.
- Sam says to pick your middle name, the street you grew up on, and your pet name.
- Matt: How do you balance your homebrew classes?
- It's a new thing to him aswell. The first real homebrew thing was to transfer the Pathfinder gunslinger for Percy, that took a while just testing and figuring it out. Balance something homebrew comes with experience and community feedback, as long as it's constructive and not yelled at you.
- Trinket should always go with the party.
- Have you ever had any embarrassing moments on stage?
- Sam: he fell off the stage while performing Les Misérables in Miami. He was taken to an hospital wearing rags and dirt during riots happening in the city. he said to the hospital that he fell off the barricades of the riot.
- Matt: he knocked over an inkwell during a production of The Crucible as Reverend Hale. The ink went on Matt's hand and when he pointed it rapidly towards the person accross him, the ink went onto the person's white shirt and his face. All of this while Laura's biggest crush was sitting in the front row.
- Laura: she wore a hoop skirt that she wasn't used to them and sat on the couch, the hoop went over Laura's head. But it was a dress rehearsal so she didn't have the full costume on, it was just underwear.
- Taliesin: he got bitten by a real goat while playing in Hell Town.
- Marisha: she was a soldier in The Nutcracker and had to come through the flat on the stage while wearing hats that came down really low. She missed the entrance and slammed into the flat, almost falling over. But the whole cardboard flat wiggled heavily.
- Have you had any in-game issues with a marauding goliath in the party?
- Matt: Grog Strongjaw's father Stonejaw Strongjaw left his tribe after Grog's early trials, and made a name for himself in Westruun as a respectable individual. People were not comfortable with Grog but it wasn't pure fear, they just stayed away. Heading for Kraghammer, Vox Machina was ambushed by the Herd of Storms, but Grog talked their way out of battle.
- As characters, do you consider yourself to be heroes?
- Sam: Collectively, they're heroic. Scanlan doesn't think he's a god, he's just there to have a good time and make fun of himself. He's a bit of an existentialist and thinks that life is sort of pointless.
- Taliesin: Percy's starting to figure out that he's not that great of a person. He's acknowledging that they're all kind of awful people - except for Pike.
- Travis: Grog lives moment to moment.
- Laura: she feel that Vax is probably a good person. He's probably, outside of Pike, the best person of the group.
- Has there ever been a time when you wanted to do something but didn't think there was time?
- Travis: Matt does a good job of being clairvoyant and sensing that if they start do to something that's going too much on a tangent and taking too much time, he will cut and bring something up that puts them back in a more cohesive track.
- Sam: But Matt also allows them to go on their little individual journeys when they need to.
- Laura: she feels guilty sometimes when they're shopping, she not only thinks that it's probably boring for the other players, but that can also be boring for the audience.
- Matt: How hard was it to transfer gunslinger from Pathfinder to D&D?
- It was more cut and dry because of the nature of the archetype. It's easier to mess around with a Fighter subclass. Figuring out how ballistics work and some of the possible tropes for gunslingers in modern media. That was an easy inspiration to transition and change some of it and still make it interesting.
- Matt: Does Matt's wristbands mean anything?
- They do. From various moments of Matt's life, one of the wristbands was gifting to Matt by somebody on Matt's first Burning Man. A representation of personal responsability and understanding where he came from, where he wants to go and making sure he doesn't stray from that path. Another wristband was gifted by Brittany Walloch-Key for on of his birthday, it represents friendship and the people that have held him in his dark times. Another one was made by Marisha for their anniversary a few years ago. She dyed the leather, printed in the numbers, and those numbers represent the actual coordinates of the beach where they had their first kiss.
References[]
- ↑ Schedule for Wizard World Gaming Portland, including the "How Do You Want To Do This?" Critical Role panel.
- ↑ Archived recording of the Twitch stream of Wizard World Gaming Portland Panel.
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